Terrorism in the United States

Terrorist incidents in this country prior to the September II, 2001 attack have included bombings of the World Trade Center in New York City, the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. and Mobil Oil corporate headquarters in New York City. 

The effects of terrorism can vary significantly from loss of life and injuries to property damage and disruptions in services such as electricity, water supply, public transportation and communications. 

One way governments attempt to reduce t)ur vulnerability to terrorist incidents is by increasing security at airports and other public facilities. The U.S. government also works with other countries to limit the sources of support for terrorism. 

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Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). 1999. Terrorism in the United States 1999. http //www. fbi.gov/publications/terror/terror99.pdf. 

Smithson and Levy (2000) reported some 139 cases where disaffected political or religiously motivated groups were in some fashion connected to chemical or biological agents between 1975 and August 2000 in the United States. On the other hand, in her comprehensive review of terrorism in the United States, Smithson concluded that to that point, the major terrorist incidents in the United States have not involved chemical warfare or biological warfare agents. As mentioned above, the most noteworthy examples are the Oklahoma City and World Trade Center attacks. 

Bombings have long been a central threat from terrorism, and several major bombing attacks have been carried out in the United States over the last decade. Two earlier reports from the National Research Council outlined a number of opportunities for technical contributions by chemical scientists.3 The recommen-... 

After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, federal investigators discussed the use of truth serum to obtain information from jailed terrorism suspects. The serum is the barbiturate thiopental, which is also known as pentothal sodium. The use of this drug to make a reluctant person talk has been portrayed in movies, books, and on television. 

In spite of this and other warnings, most primary care physicians have spent little time planning for terrorism. One reason may be the rarity of these events, especially on US soil. Until recently, the only reported case of bioterrorism in the United States was the 1984 salmonella attack in Oregon. It is unlikely that authors of family medicine textbooks written before September 2001 considered devoting significant space for discussions about how family physicians should respond to terrorist attacks. 

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